“Forensics are coming round and you’re not safe,” the agent told him sourly.  Kai pulled a face at him and slipped out of his grip, but now that he was over the initial shock, his mind was beginning to race.

It felt... and it wasn’t really a sentiment that he’d considered much until a few moments ago... wrong that Kevin had been killed.  The man was nice.  He’d stocked the fridge full of all Kai’s favourite foods, played video games with him on the play station in the front room, and hadn’t been too bothered about the youngster handling his gun provided it wasn’t loaded.  Kai wasn’t sure what a real father-figure was supposed to be like now that he wasn’t idolising one who trafficked drugs for a living and made so much money so quickly he couldn’t even launder it, but in his opinion, Kevin had come pretty close.

Myungsoo came pretty close too, come to that.  And possibly Thant.  Both of them were always looking out for Kai, and Thant had even said he saw potential in Kai for a great FBI agent and that it would be worth training him up.  Maybe Mark, too, though he was more what Kai considered would be a good prototype for a big brother.  Mark liked playing indoor basketball with bins for hoops and chucking pieces of paper at other people when he was bored, and Kai found his mild case of road rage hilarious, even if it made him horribly travelsick.

As for Kris, well...

Kai side-eyed him from the shotgun seat as Kris threw a coat into the back of the car and started the engine.

“Buckle up,” the agent snapped, even though Kai was already reaching for his seatbelt.

Kris was probably one of those really strict teachers that nobody really liked, Kai decided.  Not that he’d ever experienced one of those teachers, because he’d never had the opportunity to go to school.  But from what he’d heard of them, Kris seemed to fit the bill.

“Where are we going?” he demanded as Kris pulled out into the road.

“None of your business,” Kris snapped back as he checked the mirrors before jamming down the accelerator and sending them flying down the tarmac.  Kai winced as his head was smacked back against the seat’s headrest.

“It is my business,” Kai retorted.  “I want to know where we’re going.”

Kris just raised an eyebrow at him and eased into the wrong lane to overtake a stream of cars.  Several horns honked and the pair of them were nearly blinded by a car coming the other way, causing Kris to nip in between a Ferrari and a mini cooper, much to the indignation of both drivers, before he caused a nasty crash.  Then he was out again.  Kai wondered what the huge hurry was, but decided not to push it.  Kris appeared not to be in a great mood and even Kai could tell that he was driving well over the legal speed limit, and Kai didn’t even know what the legal speed limit was.

At some point along the way with Kris’s insane driving, Kai fell asleep.  He attributed his ability to do that with never having grown up with a proper bed and to Mark being more terrifying on the road, and he also knew that it was after they got out of the city because he remembered the lights disappearing before he dropped off.  When he woke up again, it was utterly dark and quiet and the car was parked.  Kris wasn’t there.

Abruptly in a panic, Kai shot upright and undid his seatbelt, checking that his knife was in his pocket.  He was halfway out the door with his backpack on when the driver’s door opened and Kris got back in, clutching a couple of pot noodles with steam rising from them.

“All right, keen boy, keep your pants on,” the agent smirked.  “I can’t ditch you at the moment, however much I’d like to.”

Kai eyed him and then the food, his mouth watering.  As Kris ignored him and let his seat back so that he could prop his long legs up on the dashboard, Kai became aware of a distant rush of traffic.  Lights glimmered in the distance – he’d been fooling himself to think that they were quite in the middle of nowhere – and he saw a distant sign for Burger King, along with Dunkin’ Donuts and some Chinese characters.  On further inspection, they were parked near a rest stop for the freeway.

But they were still some distance away from any of the shops, or humanity, and that unsettled Kai when he was alone purely with Kris.  After all, his ex-drug-baron-boss had somehow discovered his new name after the trials had started, and the only people who knew his new name were FBI agents.  He trusted everybody in Myungsoo’s unit because otherwise he and Myungsoo would have been dead long before they’d even managed to bust his ex-boss, and that meant that it must have been one of the newer agents who’d come on board with his case who’d managed to leak it, or somebody outside knew information they